On forgiveness

Good people are often reticent to bestow that gift. Not because we're unforgiving, but because we want to say instead that there is nothing to forgive. We make the injury smaller than it was, we make our own feelings less important, we don't want to see ourselves in a position to give or withhold favor to another human being. Sure, we can accept an apology freely. Trifling in real forgiveness is a different matter.

But there are reasons that from time to time I insist on that exchange.

When I ask to be forgiven, it's because I know that whether or not what I did was intentional, whether it was large or small, the wrong cannot be fixed or helped by me. It can only be undone by another's willingness to undo it. I am humbled from that helplessness.

When I am asked to forgive another, it binds me to let go of that injury, rather than tend that wound privately and keep it a little open always. I cannot feed it if I have forgiven it - I have said out loud and in another's hearing that the thing is undone. I am humbled again, by yielding my pride.

Both asking and receiving forgiveness requires immense trust and courage and unselfish love. That humans can do this for each other at any time they choose is pretty astounding when you think of it - that we can personally be agents of these small acts of redemption... I think of forgiveness as one of the few moments in which we are capable of the divine, and that sometimes the words must be said.